In addition to his responsibilities as Chairman of the Molecular Biology Program, Kenneth J. Marians, PhD, has been appointed Director of Graduate Studies at Sloan-Kettering Institute (SKI).
Dedicated to the advancement of our understanding of cellular processes, Graduate Studies at SKI are offered under the guidance of the Institute's scientific staff, many of whom hold joint appointments on the faculty of the Weill Graduate School of Medical Sciences of Cornell University. Currently, there are 140 graduate students at SKI.
“I have two goals,” Dr. Marians says, speaking of his mission as Director of Graduate Studies. “First, we must maintain the high standards of the program. Second, we need to work with our colleagues in the graduate school to increase our student body to deal with expansion plans at both institutions. The challenge is to do the second while maintaining the first, preserving the quality of both the faculty and the students.”
Dr. Marians points out that this mission will be made easier working in conjunction with SKI Director Thomas J. Kelly, MD, PhD, who has years of academic administrative experience in his former position at the Johns Hopkins University.
“ Our graduate school has an enormous amount of first-class research going on. This creates a tremendous opportunity where young researchers can get the kind of training they need to be successful. “
Kenneth Marians, Gerstner Sloan-Kettering Graduate School Dean
Dr. Marians stresses the important role that the graduate school plays for the entire SKI community. “It's an essential part of the research effort,” he notes. “Research science is a remarkable profession because the bulk of the work that gets done, gets done by young grad students and postdocs. These are very bright people who come in with interesting ideas. If you don't have that constant influx of new minds and new ideas, people asking questions from a different angle, science would lose a great deal.”
Addressing the factors that draw both faculty and students alike, Dr. Marians explains that, at SKI, researchers are provided with the opportunity to do cutting-edge research in a very supportive environment.
“Our graduate school is one where there is an enormous amount of first-class research going on. This creates a tremendous opportunity for incoming grad students. And this is a high quality school, where young researchers can get the kind of training that they need to be successful in the field.”
